Readers and writers: A ‘trans-glam-punk-rock love story’

Mary Ann Grossmann, Pioneer Press
·9 min read

Two novels about women and babies and a memoir by a cisgender woman about her love for her trans spouse offer rich reading this week.

“Wild Things: A Trans-Glam-Punk-Rock Love Story”: by Lynette Reini-Grandell, foreword by Venus de Mars (Minnesota Historical Society Press, $29.95)

The person I married, who I am still married to and remain very much in love with, is now legally named Venus de Mars, and she uses she and her pronouns. But to get to that point was a journey of decades. At the time we didn’t know where it would lead — we had no real role models and made it up as we went. — From “Wild Things”

How would you feel if the man you married, the love of your life, came out as transgender?

That’s the involving story Lynette Reini-Grandell tells in “Wild Things,” one of LambdaLiterary’s most anticipated books of the season, and it couldn’t be more timely, with increasing threats to the LGBTQ community in parts of the country.

Reini-Grandell and deMars are well known in the Twin Cities and abroad for their immersion in the music and arts world in the 1980s and ’90s. DeMars is a singer, songwriter, visual artist, performer and founder of the punk rock band All the Pretty Horses. Reini-Grandell earned master’s and doctoral degrees in English from the University of Minnesota and teaches creative writing at Normandale Community College and the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. A jazz violinist, she performs at spoken-word venues with the Bosso Poetry Company and the jazz collective Sonoglyph. She is the author of the poetry collections “Wild Verge” and “Approaching the Gate,” both from Holy Cow! Press.

Since this is Reini-Grandell’s story, we see her and Venus’ unusual journey from her perspective as someone who loves her spouse but sometimes felt eclipsed by the sexually charged energy that drew men and women when Venus was onstage wearing her signature torn fishnet stockings and boots.

The couple met in Duluth when Lynette was in eighth grade. She was drawn to Steve Grandell by his “bright red hair that rounded below the ears, skimming the edge of the jaw. I saw a boy whose face glimmered with a shy smile. I thought he was cute … Steve also took my breath away literally, with laughter.”

Lynette, who weaves memories of her growing-up years into her narrative, married Steve in 1983 in the Duluth church her family attended. Five years later, Steve/Venus came out as transgender and focused on the band. Meanwhile, Lynette got her degrees and taught in Rochester and the Twin Cities. She believed in Venus and All the Pretty Horses and financed shows as well as paying her and Venus’ living expenses.

What Lynette wasn’t prepared for was Venus’ depression, to the point of being suicidal, and angry outbursts.

As Venus explains in the book’s introduction about coming out in ’88: “…I knew that unless I began to untangle myself, my life would be over…”

Before Venus came out, she knew only the words “transsexual” and “transvestite”: “We were all taught, back then, to see this group of people, who I secretly understood myself to be part of, as the same kind of people: Mentally ill. Deviant. Perverted.”

As Venus became more popular with audiences, Lynette was sometimes angry and upset about the way her spouse seemed to change when they were in public. Lynette felt invisible and wanted more of the person she knew as her husband, who was busy trying to get All the Pretty Horses off the ground, planning overseas trips and hanging out with the rest of the band.

At one point Lynette and Venus separated, but were soon back together.

A telling admission from Lynette about her own self-image is sparked by her memory of a performance she and Venus did in their living room wearing bridal dresses. After the show a friend asked why Steve’s wedding dress was nicer than Lynette’s. The question caught Lynette off-guard.

“I could rationalize that my friend was reacting to the shine and more expensive material in Steve’s dress. But I also wondered if he just looked better than I did in a wedding dress — tall, slim, almost gamine, with great legs,” she writes. “I’d never felt comfortable with the shape of my body, but having Steve fall in love with me had assuaged that insecurity. Now it flooded back, and I was again thinking of clothing as camouflage. He also did his makeup better than I did, with shading and contours. I felt that anyone looking at the two of us together would find me dumpy by comparison.”

Lynette shapes the book chronologically, beginning in 1977 in Duluth and recalling times in later years when she helped carry the band’s heavy equipment to venues in Minneapolis, New York City, London and European cities.

By 2004 Venus and All the Pretty Horses were well known enough to be the subject of a documentary, “Venus of Mars,” which debuted at a film festival in Amsterdam. (The first five minutes of the film, available on YouTube, show Venus exploding onto the stage in a blazing firestorm of rock music.)

Watching the film after an argument with Venus, Lynette wondered if that was a true picture of their relationship, with scenes of the couple working with horses, one of Lynette’s passions. But she also saw the film as “…telling anyone willing to watch and listen that we loved each other and were indeed a couple … No one would denigrate us for kissing or holding hands after watching that film.”

In 2018 Venus announced to Lynette she was having gender confirmation surgery and legally changing her name to Venus de Mars. With help from a therapist experienced in working with transgender people, the couple began to look back at their conflicts and realize how their pasts had shaped them.

The book ends with a performance at Seventh Street Entry in Minneapolis with Venus playing guitar and Lynette on violin. The song was about two people who could overcome the odds together.

“Wild Things” will be launched at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 16, at The Hook and Ladder Theater, 3010 Minnehaha Ave., Minneapolis, with Lynette in conversation with arts/culture reporter Marianne Combs. Free. All the Pretty Horses will perform a free concert beginning at 9 p.m.

Lynette and Venus will have a conversation at 7 p.m. Friday, March 31, at Minnesota Humanities Commission Events Center, 987 E. Ivy Ave., St. Paul, in observance of Trans Day of Visibility. $10. Information at registrations@mnhum.org.

“The Clayfields”: by Elise Gregory (Cornerstone Press, $24.95 paperback)

After nestling the pan beneath Sassy, she began by trapping the teat between thumb and forefinger with both hands and squeezing down. It was pleasant work with a compliant doe, the fist spray of milk whistling against the steel bottom. Sassy moving on to her alfalfa, cracking stems. Lavender, warm milk, hay, and beast rising in Terra’s nose. In five minutes, the pail was full.

This debut by a Wisconsin author should have been published by a major New York house. It’s that good.

Subtitled “a novel in stories,” this love letter to people living in Midwestern farm communities is also a story of how women connect even if they haven’t known one another

It’s set in the Clayfields area of Pierce County, Wis., across the Mississippi River from Minnesota. So it’s not surprising the images Gregory evokes are familiar to Minnesotans, including humble farm country churches, harvesting equipment lighting up the night fields during harvest, summer festivals, “old man” bars and lots of hard work.

It begins when pregnant Helen leaves Chicago in search of her lover’s family farm. She wants that land. When she arrives at the farm, much to the surprise of her lover’s parents Meg and Paul, she ends up staying with Terra, who is grieving the loss of her husband and partner at her goat farm where she makes cheeses.

The cast includes Emilie, a good-hearted bartender whose lover wants his own land; Lani, the unmarried mother whose rich lover died. Representing the younger generation are Hiran, a teen who isn’t sure what to do with his life, and his contemporaries baker Esther and her friend Katie.

All the characters come alive on the page, but the one who jumps at you is Lupine, a long-legged, enthusiastic teen who loves the outdoors and her grandfather’s stories. She helps Terra at the goat farm and both women help Helen through her pregnancy.

“The Clayfields” is a tender-hearted story and the author clearly loves her characters. It needs a wide audience.

Gregory will introduce her book at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 16, at Chippewa Falls (Wis.) public library.

“Theresa et al”: by Jean Hackel (Pond Reads Press, $19.99 paperback)

“‘What do you think motivated these women to abduct you in particular?’ Carole asked.

Theresa shrugged. ‘I think they’re always motivated,’

What do you mean, always motivated?’

‘Like in a cult. Anyone thinking about abortion could be a target.'”

In May of 2018, Theresa learns she is pregnant with a fetus likely to be born with a genetic defect. Her husband, Charlie, is on duty in Afghanistan and abortion is still legal. Planning to leave the family farm to have the procedure in the Twin Cities, Theresa is stopped by a group of women from her mother Maureen’s Catholic church. They try to talk her into having the baby. When that doesn’t work, they kidnap her, hoping to keep her past the point when an abortion would be legal.

Nobody at the farm seems worried that Theresa is missing except her 13-year-old sister, Annie, and husband Charlie. Annie contacts her older sister Claire, who is estranged from their mother, and Claire teams up with Charlie’s father, Woodrow, who drives from Alabama to help search for Theresa. Then comes word that Charlie has been badly burned in Afghanistan.

The baby is born and grandmother Maureen takes him, believing he is rightfully hers because, among other things, the father’s family in Alabama are “heathens.” Maureen’s husband Tom doesn’t want to raise their grandchild, pointing out how expensive it will be to care for a child with Down syndrome.

Then, things get complicated as the families, one in Minnesota, one in Alabama, stake their claims to Patrick, named by Maureen for a saint without anyone’s approval. Because Theresa left the baby at the hospital, which she could do under Minnesota law, the families are enmeshed in legal issues.

There is good news. Claire and Woodrow fall in love and are married. Theresa and Charlie have another child, one that Theresa wants and loves.

What Hackel does so well is show us each character’s feelings and motivations. Maureen, for instance, is not very lovable but at times she dominates the story with her deep faith in her God and her certainty she is doing the right thing by taking Patrick.

As she tells her husband, she loves her religion more than him and their children. But her soul is in agony too. She wonders what sin she committed in raising a daughter who would abandon her baby. And she wonders if she did right by allowing her church friends to kidnap Theresa. If there are dark nights of the soul, Maureen has them. Even when she lies to law enforcement and the courts, she thinks she is doing what God demands she do.

A worthy read during this wet and snowy March.

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